PREFAB FRIDAY: Home Factory in London

Throughout Europe, the idea of a single, self-build pre-fab house is impractical because of the cost and scarcity of land. To be truly affordable, pre-fab homes need to be designed as apartments that can stack together horizontally and vertically. This is the market Home Factory in London has aimed their homes – at big public housing associations and charities to bring designer pre-fab homes to affordable levels.

Home Factory is saying that they will try to sell their homes for under £100,000, compared to an average house price in August 2006 of £199,184 in England Wales, and a whopping £317,679 in Greater London.

The business is run by two former marketing and public relations consultants, and they stepped up their marketing campaign with a demonstration home put up for a week on Store Street in London. The home is a single-aspect (this means windows on only one side) one-bed apartment that is built using a method the Home Factory calls Modern Methods of Construction (MMC). Most of us know this as another term called pre-fabrication – it may be an attempt to avoid the use of the term “pre-fab” to gain interest. Up to seven typologies are listed on the website, but the demonstration home interior is the only interior that is displayed.

Clearly the usefulness in the Home Factory demonstration is the stackability of the units to construct a building – the units can withstand a maximum of 12 stories loaded on top of them. The single-aspect version is indeed modern and stylish with a good kitchen bench, enough space for a bath, and floor-to-ceiling windows. However, a larger, 2- or 3-bed double-aspect apartment will be expected as well – it will be interesting to see what Home Factory’s stackable solution will become.

11 thoughts on “PREFAB FRIDAY: Home Factory in London”

just squat! there's plenty of free houses in the city if you have a good crowbar and a little initiative! Maybe get a guard dog as well to keep out the money grubbing terrorists! ..there are just too many perfectly good homes going to waste because the current cult -ure is so greedy, immature, and inefficient.

I am Alex one of the co founders of Home Factory. Please check out www.home-factory.co.uk which should give everyone all the info they need. The space next to the bathroom is a cupboard for your washer dryer. The one bed unit is 46sqm or roughly 475 sq ft. We do 1, 2 and 3 beds all the sizes are on the site.
We also called it a designer pre fab home deliberately at our launch so as to reclaim the name in a positive way. We feel strongly it is about time people design homes for themselves. Designing homes from the inside out enables the optiumum living experience ! Using prefab techniques also enables quality to be upheld and standards raised overall. If you paid that much money for a car it woud have to be pretty special why should we not expect the same from our homes!
Take care all
Alex

Im a new reader, so forgive me if I sound ignorant, but how does the transportation of these pre-fabs compare to that of normal construction material transport. Is it a more efficient means of delivery?
How much impacts on residents would adding additional pre-fab units to a site already occupied?
The indented windows of the first photo seem like bad design, as it decreases the amount of availilbe natural light.
It seems like a good way to avoid the nuissance of construction for neighbors in high density locations by doing the construction off site. Does off site construction provide a net gain in efficiency?

It looks to be about 16'x24' for the single - just under 400 sq.ft. Here in Calgary, something ~500sq.ft. within walking distance to the downtown core is $180k - $250k, and many of those are conversions of crusty 1960's 3-storey walkups. The space beside the bathroom could be a laundry, but it may just be a closet. Many English homes have a combo washer/dryer unit in the kitchen that takes up the same amount of space as a NorAm dishwasher.

I would just like to point out that currently the UK has plenty of land which is currently being developed using brick and mortar, which are old fashioned, small and ugly. It is about time the UK and the rest of the world embraced prefabs for their sustainability, aesthetics and design innovation. Prefabs should be available for detached family housing as well as high rise blocks.

prefab defintiely has come a long way. the most useful advacne is that now you can have multi-level prefab buildings. i made a quiz here http://www.modulartoday.com/quiz.html to show how hard it is to tell the difference beween modualr homes and traditional homes
have a good weekend